John Yoo
|birth_place =Seoul, South Korea |residence = |nationality = |ethnicity = |citizenship = |other_names = |known_for =Legal views on warrantless searches, domestic surveillance, torture memos (also known as "enhanced interrogation techniques") and expansive executive power |education = |alma_mater = Harvard University, B.A. Yale Law School, J.D. |employer = |occupation = Law professor, former official in the United States Department of Justice |years_active = |home_town = |salary = |networth = |title = Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of JusticeFaculty Profile, Univ of California, Berkeley |term = 2001 to 2003 |spouse =Elsa Arnett"In Berkeley, Yoo feels at home as a stranger in a strange land" by Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2010. Retrieved 2010-03-30. Arnett is the daughter of journalist Peter Arnett. |children = |parents = |relations = |awards = Federalist Society Paul M. Bator Award (2001)Past Bator Award Recipients |signature = |website = |footnotes = }} John Choon Yoo (born July 10, 1967)Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2008. is an American attorney, law professor, and author. As a former official in the United States Department of Justice during the George W. Bush administration, he became known as the author of the Torture Memos on the use of what the CIA called enhanced interrogation techniques. Career John Yoo has been a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law since 1993. He wrote two books on presidential power and the war on terrorism, and many articles in scholarly journals and newspapers.Bibliography at the American Enterprise Institute; Bibliography at the Social Science Research Network He has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento and has been a visiting law professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, the University of Chicago, and Chapman University School of Law. Since 2003, Yoo has been a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. He writes a monthly column, entitled "Closing Arguments", for The Philadelphia Inquirer and is author of the book Crisis and Command. Yoo was a law clerk for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He also served as general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yoo is best known for his work from 2001 to 2003 in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the George W. Bush Administration. In the Justice Department, Yoo's expansive view of presidential power led to a close relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Yoo played an important role in developing a legal justification for the Bush administration's policy in the war on terrorism, arguing that prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions does not apply to "enemy combatants" captured during the war in Afghanistan and held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, asserting executive authority to undertake waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" regarded as torture by the current Justice Department. Yoo also argued that the president was not bound by the War Crimes Act and provided a legal opinion backing the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Yoo's legal opinions were not shared by some within the Bush Administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly opposed what he saw as an invalidation of the Geneva Conventions, while U.S. Navy general counsel Alberto Mora campaigned internally against what he saw as the "catastrophically poor legal reasoning" and dangerous extremism of Yoo's opinions. In December 2003, Yoo's memo on permissible interrogation techniques, also known as the Bybee memo, was repudiated as legally unsound by the OLC, then under the direction of Jack Goldsmith. In June 2004, another of Yoo's memos on interrogation techniques was leaked to the press, after which it was repudiated by Goldsmith and the OLC. Yoo's contribution to these memos has remained a source of controversy after his departure from the Justice Department; he was called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in 2008 in defense of his role. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) began investigating Yoo's work in 2004 and in July 2009 completed a report that was sharply critical of his legal justification for waterboarding and other interrogation techniques. The OPR report cites testimony Yoo gave to Justice Department investigators where he claims that the "president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be 'massacred'"Report: Bush Lawyer Said President Could Order Civilians to Be 'Massacred', Newsweek, February 19, 2010 The OPR report concluded that Yoo had "committed 'intentional professional misconduct' when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects," although the recommendation that he be referred to his state bar association for possible disciplinary proceedings was overruled by David Margolis, another senior Justice department lawyer. In 2009, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón Real launched an investigation of Yoo and five others (known as The Bush Six) for war crimes. Biography Yoo emigrated with his parents from South Korea to the United States as an infant. He grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, graduating from the Episcopal Academy in 1985. He earned a B.A. degree summa cum laude in American history from Harvard University in 1989 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1992. Yoo was admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania in 1993. From 1995 to 1996, he was general counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is married to Elsa Arnett, the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Peter Arnett. Publications Yoo's writings and areas of interest fall into three broad areas: American foreign relations; the Constitution's separation of powers and federalism; and international law. In foreign relations, Yoo has argued that the original understanding of the Constitution gives the President the authority to use armed force abroad without congressional authorization, subject to Congress's power of the purse; that treaties do not generally have domestic legal force without implementing legislation; and that courts are functionally ill-suited to intervene in foreign policy disputes between the President and Congress. With the separation of powers, Yoo has argued that each branch of government has the authority to interpret the Constitution for itself, which provides the justification for judicial review by the federal courts. In international law, Yoo has written that the rules governing the use of force must be understood to allow nations to engage in armed intervention to end humanitarian disasters, rebuild failed states, and stop terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.John C. Yoo and Jide Nzelibe, Rational War and Constitution Design, Yale Law Journal 115 (2006):2512John C. Yoo, War, Responsibility, and the Age of Terrorism, Stanford Law Review 57 (2004): 793John C. Yoo, Globalism and the Constitution: Treaties, Non-Self-Execution, and the Original Understanding, Columbia Law Review 99 (1999): 1955John C. Yoo, Using Force, University of Chicago Law Review 71 (2004): 729John C. Yoo and Julian Ku, Beyond Formalism in Foreign Affairs: A Functional Approach to the Alien Tort Statute, The Supreme Court Review 2004 p. 153. Yoo's academic work also includes his analysis of the history of judicial review in the U.S. Constitution.See discussion in the article Marbury v. Madison Yoo's book, The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11, was praised in an Op-Ed in The Washington Times, written by Nicholas J. Xenakis, an assistant editor at The National Interest.Congress goes wobbly, The Washington Times, October 25, 2005 It was quoted by Senator Joe Biden during the Senate hearings for then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, who "pressed Alito to denounce John Yoo's controversial defense of presidential initiative in taking the nation to war.""The War Over the War Powers" Yoo is known as a public opponent of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Yoo has authored three books: * * * He has also contributed chapters to other books, including: * Legal opinions Regarding torture of detainees and children of detainees After he left the Department of Justice, it was revealed that Yoo had authored memos, including co-authoring the Torture Memo of August 1, 2002, defining torture and American habeas corpus obligations narrowly.Double Standards?, MSNBC, May 15, 2005 The Interrogation Documents: Debating U.S. Policy and Methods * The Torture Memos and Academic Freedom by Christopher Edley, Jr., The Honorable William Horsley Orrick, Jr., Distinguished Chair and Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall, April 10, 2008 * Bush Admits To Knowledge of Torture Authorization by Top Advisers by the American Civil Liberties Union * Yoo Two, by Scott Horton, "No Comment", April 3, 2008 * John Yoo: Spearhead or scapegoat? by Glenn Greenwald, April 12, 2008Suggested origin of legal justifications * The Bush Regime from Elections to Detentions: A Moral Economy of Carl Schmitt and Human Rights by David Abraham, University of Miami Law School, University of Miami Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2007-20, May 2007 * Torture, Necessity and Existential Politics by Christopher L. Kutz, University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 870602, December 2005 * Deconstructing John Yoo by Scott Horton, Harpers, January 23, 2008 * The will to undemocratic power By Philip S. Golub, Le Monde diplomatique, September 2006 * The Leo-conservatives by Gerhard Spörl, Der Spiegel, August 4, 2003 In addition, a new definition of torture was issued. Most actions that fall under the international definition do not fall within this new definition advocated by the U.S.U.S. definition of torture * Judge's anger at US torture by Richard Norton-Taylor and Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, February 17, 2006 * Torture as National Policy by Dahr Jamail, Tomdispatch.com, March 9, 2006 Several top military lawyers, including Alberto J. Mora, reported that policies allowing methods equivalent to torture were officially handed down from the highest levels of the administration, and led an effort within the Department of Defense to put a stop to those policies and instead mandate non-coercive interrogation standards. Memorandum for Inspector General, Department of the Navy (July 7, 2004)[http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?060227fa_fact "How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted", Jane Mayer, The New Yorker (February 27, 2006)] On December 1, 2005, Yoo appeared in a debate in Chicago with University of Notre Dame law professor Doug Cassel. During the debate Cassel asked Yoo, "If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?", to which Yoo replied "No treaty." Cassel followed up with "Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...", to which Yoo replied "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that." Yoo/Cassel debate"Meek, mild and menacing" On June 26, 2008, Yoo and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and former counsel David Addington testified before the House Judiciary Committee in a contentious hearing on detainee treatment, interrogation methods and the extent of executive branch authority. Addington, Yoo offer little in House Torture Hearing, video of Addington and Yoo's testimony, Democracy Now! In this hearing, Rep. John Conyers repeatedly asked Yoo to clarify his remarks on the presidential power to authorize torture:http://crooksandliars.com/2008/06/26/john-conyers-grills-john-torture-yoo-he-stonewalls Regarding the Fourth amendment Yoo also authored the October 23, 2001 memo asserting that the President had sufficient power to allow the NSA to monitor the communications of US citizens on US soil without a warrant because the fourth amendment does not apply. Or, as another memo says in one of its footnotes, "Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations." Fourth amendment does not apply * DOJ Endorsed Terrorism Exception to 4th Amendment in Another Disavowed Memo, By Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal, magazine of the American Bar Association, April 4, 2008 * Bush Administration Memo Says Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply To Military Operations Within U.S., ACLU, April 2, 2008 * Memo linked to warrantless surveillance by Pamela Hess and Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press, April 3, 2008 * Administration Asserts No Fourth Amendment for Domestic Military Operations, Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 2, 2008 That interpretation is used to assert that the normal mandatory requirement of a warrant, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, could be ignored. In a 2006 book and a 2007 law review article, Yoo defended President Bush's terrorist surveillance program, arguing that "the TSP represents a valid exercise of the President's Commander-in-Chief authority to gather intelligence during wartime." He claimed that critics of the program misunderstand the separation of powers between the President and Congress in wartime because of a failure to properly understand the differences between war and crime, and a difficulty in understanding the new challenges presented by a networked, dynamic enemy such as al Qaeda. "Because the United States is at war with al Qaeda, the President possesses the constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief to engage in warrantless surveillance of enemy activity."John C. Yoo, "The Terrorist Surveillance Program and the Constitution", Geo. Mason L. Rev. 14 (2007):565. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in July 2009, Yoo found it "absurd to think that a law like FISA should restrict live military operations against potential attacks on the United States."Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps, Wall St. Journal, July 16, 2009, page A13. Unitary executive theory Yoo suggested that since the primary task of the President during a time of war is protecting US citizens, the President has inherent authority to subordinate independent government agencies, and plenary power to use force abroad.Suggested interpretation of War Powers in the Bush administration * George Bush's rough justice — The career of the latest supreme court nominee has been marked by his hatred of liberalism by Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian, January 12, 2006 * How Close Are We to the End of Democracy? by Martin Garbus, The Huffington Post, January 20, 2006 * Scholar Stands by Post-9/11 Writings On Torture, Domestic Eavesdropping by Peter Slevin, The Washington Post, December 26, 2005. Yoo contends that the Congressional check on Presidential war making power comes from its power of the purse, and that the President, and not the Congress or courts, has sole authority to interpret international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions "because treaty interpretation is a key feature of the conduct of foreign affairs".[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/960315in.html An interview with John Yoo: author of The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11] His positions on executive power are controversial because the theory can be interpreted as holding that the President's war powers place him above any law.A Wunnerful, Wunnerful Constitution, John C. Yoo Notwithstanding, After Downing Street, December 9, 2005 , Vanderbilt UniversityMeek, mild and menacing, Salon.com, January 12, 2006 In the Clinton administration Yoo was a strong critic of what he viewed as the Clinton administration's use of the powers of what he termed the "Imperial Presidency". For instance, Yoo wrote: Yet, Yoo has defended both Republican and Democratic Presidents, including President Clinton, in their decisions to use force abroad without congressional authorization. He wrote in The Wall Street Journal on March 15, 1999 that Clinton's decision to attack Serbia was constitutional, and criticized Democrats in Congress for not suing Clinton as they had sued Presidents Bush and Reagan to stop the war: Yoo further stated, in regard to the Clinton administration's use of executive power: Yoo declared in 2000, at a conference regarding executive power: Yoo has been a defender of executive privilege, but only for protecting national security, diplomatic and military secrets. He criticized the Clinton administration for misusing the privilege to protect the personal, rather than official, activities of the President, in the Monica Lewinsky affair: Yoo also criticized President Clinton for contemplating the defiance of a judicial order. Yoo suggested that Presidents could act in conflict with the Supreme Court, but that such measures were justified only during emergencies, and not to defend against a President's personal sexual affairs: In the George W. Bush administration Following his tenure as an appointee of the George W. Bush Administration, Yoo criticized certain views on the separation of powers doctrine as allegedly being historically inaccurate and problematic for the Global War on Terrorism, stating, for instance: and War crimes accusations Glenn Greenwald has argued that Yoo could potentially be indicted for crimes against the laws and customs of war, the crime of torture, and/or crimes against humanity. Criminal proceedings to this end have begun in Spain: in a move that could lead to an extradition request, Judge Baltasar Garzón in March 2009 referred a case against Yoo to the chief prosecutor.Julian Borger, "Spanish judge to hear torture case against six Bush officials", The Observer, 29 March 2009 mirror On November 14, 2006, invoking the principle of command responsibility, German attorney Wolfgang Kaleck filed a complaint with the German Federal Attorney General (Generalbundesanwalt) against Yoo, along with 13 others for his alleged complicity in torture and other crimes against humanity at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay. Wolfgang Kaleck acted on behalf of 11 alleged victims of torture and other human rights abuses, as well as about 30 human rights activists and organizations. The co-plaintiffs to the war crimes prosecution included Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Martín Almada, Theo van Boven, Sister Dianna Ortiz, and Veterans for Peace.Universal jurisdiction *Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse by Adam Zagorin, Time Responding to the so-called "torture memoranda" Scott Horton pointed out the possibility that the authors of these memoranda counseled the use of lethal and unlawful techniques, and therefore face criminal culpability themselves. That, after all, is the teaching of United States v. Altstötter, the Nuremberg case brought against German Justice Department lawyers whose memoranda crafted the basis for implementation of the infamous "Night and Fog Decree." Legal scholars speculated shortly thereafter that the case has little chance of successfully making it through the German court system.[http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1560224,00.html Time magazine report on lawsuit against Yoo, et al] Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center concurred, responding to Attorney General Mukasey's refusal to investigate and/or prosecute anyone that relied on these legal opinions: it is legally and morally impossible for any member of the executive branch to be acting lawfully or within the scope of his or her authority while following OLC opinions that are manifestly inconsistent with or violative of the law. General Mukasey, just following orders is no defense!Just Following Orders? DOJ Opinions and War Crimes Liability by Jordan Paust, Jurist, February 18, 2008 On January 4, 2008, John Yoo was sued in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Case Number 08-cv-00035-JSW) by José Padilla and his mother. The complaint seeks $1 in damages based on the alleged torture of Padilla attributed by the complaint to Yoo's torture memoranda. Judge Jeffrey S. White allowed the suit to proceed, rejecting all but one of Yoo's immunity claims. Padilla's lawyer says White's ruling could have a broad impact for all detainees. Yoo's torture memoranda had been almost immediately retracted by Jack Goldsmith upon his October 2003 assumption of the duties of chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice. The Padilla complaint, on page 20, cites Goldsmith's 2007 book The Terror Presidency in support of its case. Goldsmith's book and his interviews while marketing the book claimed that the legal analysis in Yoo's torture memoranda was incorrect and that there was widespread opposition to the memoranda among some lawyers in the Justice Department, providing the basis for the lawsuit. The claim is that Yoo caused Padilla's damages by authorizing his alleged torture through his memoranda. Retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Colin Powell's former chief of staff (in both the Persian Gulf War and while Powell was Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), has stated the following regarding Yoo: "Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzales and — at the apex — Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In the future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court." Office of Professional Responsibility Report The Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility concluded in a 261 page report dated July 29, 2009 that Yoo committed "intentional professional misconduct" when he "knowingly failed to provide a thorough, objective, and candid interpretation of the law" and recommended a referral to the Pennsylvania Bar for disciplinary action.http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issues_OPRReport.html Justice Department OPR Report in PDF format, available from the website of the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. However, career Justice department lawyer David Margolis in a Memorandum dated January 5, 2010 countermanded the recommended referral.http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issues_OPRReport.html Margolis Memorandum in PDF format, available from the website of the US House of Representatives House Committee on the Judiciary. While Margolis was careful to avoid "an endorsement of the legal work" which he said was "flawed" and "contained errors more than minor" concluding that Yoo had exercised "poor judgment," still he did not find "professional misconduct" sufficient to authorize OPR "to refer its findings to the state bar disciplinary authorities." Yoo contended that the Office of Professional Responsibility had manifested "rank bias and sheer incompetence," intended to "smear my reputation," and that Margolis "completely rejected its recommendations." John Yoo, My Gift to the Obama Presidency, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704188104575083473537079844.html, The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2010 See also *Extraordinary rendition by the United States *Jay Bybee *The Imperial Presidency *U.S. Army and CIA interrogation manuals *List of federal political scandals in the United States References External links * * * * * * Category:1967 births Category:American Enterprise Institute Category:American foreign policy writers Category:American legal scholars Category:American legal writers Category:American political writers Category:American politicians of Korean descent Category:George W. Bush administration controversies Category:George W. Bush Administration personnel Category:Harvard University alumni Category:South Korean emigrants to the United States Category:Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Category:Living people Category:University of California, Berkeley School of Law faculty Category:War on Terror Category:Yale Law School alumni fr:John Yoo ko:존 유